Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Hey guys. Forgive me if I say something wrong, or post this in the wrong forum, as obviously I am a newbie. I'm pretty sure this is where I post this, so here goes:

Zombie Panic is an extremely fun multiplayer mod, I'm not sure if anybody here has heard of it. Problem is, not many people actually play it. There is one - maybe two servers out there that have the game up 24/7, with a hardcore group of about 50 people who play it occasionally. Zombie Panic is at it's best when there's at least 10 people playing.

Zombie Panic is also a mod in dire, dire need of bots. For times when there is nobody playing, or for times when there is a desire to play offline, a bot would be most useful. I've been on patrol, hoping to find even a simple HLDM bot that would work with Zombie Panic, because, frankly, that's all it needs. In terms of handling weapons and attacking, all a Zombie Panic bot would need is to be able to spawn itself and play using standard HLDM teamplay mechanics.

I've asked around the ZP forums to see if there were bots that would be compatible; they don't know either. So I turn to the experts: You guys. I've tried HPB, and I've tried RCbot. Both bots join the game, but when it comes to actually creating players, it's a no-go.

Are there any bots which might be compatible with Zombie Panic?

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

well I think you really narrow down who can respond to this since you said you came to the "experts" which, I believe, most of us aren't. I think most of us are just hobbyists.
you'll probably have to (or find someone to) modify the HPBBot (or some other multimod bot) to support Zombie Panic or make a new bot for Zombie Panic.

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Damn. I'd love to get in there and tinker with HBP's code, but I'm too inexperienced with Half-Life stuff - plus I really don't have the time to start learning.

Oh well. :-/

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Too bad you don't have time, because it's actually quite simple, and we'd have enjoyed to help you out. Perhaps you can find someone else in your community who'd want to do it ? Don't hesitate to send him here if so :)

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Simple for you, maybe. I am not pro-efficient in C++ code. My coding experience is limited to TI-82 BASIC, Clickteam Event Script, mIRC scripting, and PHP.

Just trying to read Botman's readme is making my head spin. :(

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Heyyo,

Yeah, it's pretty much needed that you need to know at least the basics of c++, and then you can work from there. *sighs* for now I think I'll just stick with modding gta script (san andreas! here I come baby!)

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

basics of C should be sufficient I guess

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Even with some c++ knowledge botmans hpb bot and the readme still seems very hard.

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Look, when I decided that I wanted to code a bot, I knew only how to write hello world's in C, and not any C++ at all. Nevertheless, hacking the HPB_bot turned out to be a piece of cake after one week or two. I don't know any person that tried seriously to get into hacking the HPB_bot and failed. Even (3)Colors could do it. Now what ?

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

The first time you read the readme/source it might look very hard. Just read the readme a few times and you'll understand how the bot itself works. After that you should reading cpp files such as bot.cpp and bot_combat.cpp and things will start to make even more sence.
Now you can start with modifying small things(add mod-specific entities in h_export, change the weapon table in bot_combat etc).
Ofcourse if you have any problems you can ask them here :)

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Yeah, but even You admited he was really smart. ;)
About comparing to Your successes with turning HPB_BOT template in 2 weeks - look - there should be some reason why You are so known at a lot of boards and the people know You as a metamod genius. Not everyone can be the same like You... :)

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

maybe ppl new to bot coding should know that the first weeks of coding on a bot ( well, the first time, you gotta call it "getting used to the HPB template and at that time : detecting bugs" ) were not productive at all, although I worked several hours per day on it. And I think it wasnt much different for the others, especially reminding me of the numerous questions of pierre in botman's forums :D
sometimes ppl seem to forget that the bots out there are the work of often more than a year with often more than 1000 hours work in total spent on it. from todays pov there were of course several hours lost with stupid mistakes, problems in organizing code, and so forth. but most of us began with only little coding experience with projects of such size.

back to coding my second reversi bot ... a nice free time activity to relax from university :P

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

After tinkering a bit, I realize I have no idea how to compile this. I've tried the free Borland Compile tools, but those gave me a long list of errors (26 in all). I tried Mingw in hopes that might help, but that doesn't even give me a list of command lines I could use with it like the Borland compiler did.

I'm not even sure I'm tinkering with the right build of the bot. (I decided to grab the "plugin" version instead of the "template" version) And I do compile bot.cpp, right? Or what? o_O

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

the easiest way is to get MSVC, open the workspace and hit F7 ;)

It should compile right away. (ofcourse you need to set up your libs, hl sdk dirs, but i thought the 'original' HPB could compile without these.?)

you don't compile bot.cpp alone, you compile the entire project. Bot.cpp is a part of the 'bot'. A bot needs more then just one file. The project exists out of 'parts' , ie, a bot brain. Access to the DLL, hooking, etc. Most stuff you don't really need to bother around the first time.

When you get it compiled, you should worry about bot.cpp , later on you can figure out how the other stuff works. Eventually , just follow the flow of the functions and their calls.

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Nah okay. You should start a new thread for that. We'll help you compiling the stuff.

First, if you get the metamod plugin version, you have to get the metamod source code too, and the Half-Life SDK. But instead of doing that, we advise you to grab the HL bot compile pack we built up here at Bots United to ease a beginner's work. You can get it from here

Once you have done this, you can open the project file (.dsw or .dsp) file with Microsoft Visual C++ and hit F7 to compile the bot DLL, and it should compile without error :)



*edit* I updated the HL bot kit in the filebase with the latest sources. You can go for it eyes shut.

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Okay, so. Now that I have time to dedicate to this, I am somewhat interested in picking up where I left off. Furthermore, I am now aware that perhaps it would be a better idea to ask this first:

What, exactly, is required for "putting the hooks" in HPB bot to get it to load in a seperate mod? It's been awhile since I looked at what I did back in... cripes, April? Looks as though I edited bot_models.cpp, h_export.cpp, and bot_weapons.cpp in an attempt to make the bot use Zombie Panic stuff (dlls, models, weapons. I make Zombie Panic identify itself as VALVE_DLL, which may or may not be a smart idea)

Is that all I need to do? Should I go ahead and start that new topic on compiling and whatnot?

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Better start a new tread and post there your questions. Btw you don't need to rename the mod.dll file to work with HPB. You just need to add support for it.
#define ZombiePanic_DLL ZPfolder/mod.dll
After that just use the h_export to add this to be loaded, After that update the linkfunc.cpp. Better read the botman readme file. All that stuff is wroted more clear there.

Re: Zombie Panic compatible bots?
 

Done. ;)